Castaway, an Eve-Online feature film.

On the evening of the 17th April 2009 I located an archeology site in a Class 4 Unknown system. It required traversing from Empire into Unknown space, then deeper into Unknown space.

Curious about this as I was, I spoke to Kale and we called for our online pilots to get ready to roll out with remote repping battleships. Below was our destination.

Argos? In my wormhole? It's more likely than you think.

Okay, okay, I had to make that joke. Real screenshot this time.

Yes, there's really an Argos on the overview.

Looks pretty lunchable, right?

That’s what I thought.

We headed out with 5 battleships (we had a sixth for about 15 minutes) and a cruiser, 2 Megathrons, 2 Tempests 1 Dominix and a Ruppie. We got to the system without collapsing any of the wormholes behind us, we cleared the opening wave and salvaged the wrecks, then discovered that we had the wrong module (my fault, I thought it was a hacking site. Oops >_>) and sent our Dominix back home to switch mods.

We only had 2 probers in the gang, one being my Covert Ops (I was dual boxing) and the other being the Dominix.

On his way he bumped into some industrial ships, including an Orca. Some minutes later the Orca was on the wormhole leading into us – we’d already moved our fleet to intercept and had ships on both sides – no way home for him.

He rolled the dice and jumped through (not much else for him to do) and our ships followed.

As our last battleship jumped back in the wormhole collapsed. We didn’t pay the fact too much heed, as we were busy dispatching the unlucky Orca pilot, nor did we worry about it afterwards as we were more interested in continuing with our Archeology site.

Yeah fat chance.

We moved back onto the site, grouped up on one of the objects to be analyzed and started it up. Wham, 3 bs & support spawns.

We dealt with it, but it was a little dicey from time to time and cap boosters were being eaten like candy. When the last one fell, 4 battleships spawned.

“Who has aggro?”

Silence.

“WHO HAS AGGRO? CALL IT”

Silence.

“Who the fuck are they shooti… Oh.”

I think the rest of us realised who they’d targetted around the same time he did.

Then Yswr’s poor Ruppie exploded.

It was pretty sudden, and though I lament to admit it, pretty funny to watch. Though I didn’t laugh for long, as I was next on the buffet menu.

Despite the fact that they spawned 80km away, this did not seem to diminish their ability to beat me into a cowering ball of swearwords as they cut through our remote repping quicker than I consider sensible. Once my Tempest dived into hull we warped out, not looking back.

And this is where our adventure began.

Although I say adventure, we didn’t go very far.

We now had our entire gang in an Unknown system without a way out. It was probing time. And oh boy was it a nightmare.

It seems whenever I want a site I find a wormhole, and whenever I want a wormhole I find gas clouds. A lot of gas clouds.

Fuck gas clouds.

We found an exit that led to another Unknown system, except this Unknown system apparantly had no otherexits.

Then we (this time Han) found another exit to more Unknown space in the system our fleet remained in, unsurprisingly it was the final signature ID left in the system, meaning a LONG TIME OF SCANNING was required before it was actually located, every other signature having been ruled out beforehand.

I don’t know what time it was when I jumped back from having scanned every single signature in my system down to a group ID (Gravimetric etc) and ruled out the possibility of another exit in there, but Ventrilo was seemingly slipping into a state of dementia, as evidenced by the can I met on my way in to meet up with the fleet.

When Castaway and Event Horizon collided.

People were playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 to pass the time while still logged into Eve, while us lucky probers… well, probed.

Having ruled out every signature in two systems, we moved into the new one Han had found and started work in there.

14 signatures found on 32au scan.

1 could be ruled out as our inbound wormhole, so 13 to filter through.

Ventrilo is a fit of giggles from people exhausted (probably past 3am at this point) and likely mildly drunk.

It was the 11th signature of 13 that turned out to be our exit. After almost 4 hours of constant probing we were out. Hello Sinq Laison! AUTOPILOT TO HOME PLX.

I wish I could say that after the 4 hour probing experience (jesus christ I needed a beer after that) that I turned my back on Wormhole Space, but I’d be lying, and yesterday I found this:

Class 6 Sleeper Archeology Site.

Like fuck I’m going in there with anything other than a Covert Ops, however. To hell with that.

I also have completed the website I mentioned in the previous post. I realise I didn’t post anything between then and now, so no previews or rough drafts going up here, but you can view it at www.man-itp.co.uk if you so wish.